Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) light-rail stations have attracted more than $7 billion worth of new or planned development within a quarter mile of the stations, the agency announced yesterday.

That's according to a new report prepared on behalf of DART by University of North Texas (UNT) researchers, who also determined that this activity generated more than 43,000 jobs and nearly $3 billion in wages, salaries and benefits in 2014 and 2015, DART officials said in a press release.

Projects that are completed or under construction have been responsible for $2.03 billion in total spending throughout the region, while potential spending for planned or proposed transit-oriented development (TOD) projects could result in an additional $5.1 billion, according to the report.

"DART, and the projects around it, will sustain our continued growth," said UNT economics professor Michael Carroll, who led the study. "This very rapid increase in investment and development activity around DART stations reflects the improvement in our regional economy. More important, this proves the wisdom of regional leaders in building a regional transit network like DART.

It's crazy to me how many DART stations still have so much potential to be developed into something more. There has certainly been some nice progress around some stations, but many are still pretty barren.

I'm surprised we haven't seen the Parker road station turned into some TOD. Perhaps if/when the Cotton Belt gets underway, that may drastically change things in East Plano.

Interesting... What I fund puzzling is that other than the western half of the Forrest Lane proposal (currently a station parking lot), I really don't see what business DART has even having these properties. I realize there is a chance that it came along with another needed property at the time of building the line, but none of these serve a purpose for DART. As tax payers, shouldn't we be concerned that a public entity is holding onto this land for no functional purpose? Hopefully, selling it now will end up netting them more $$ than had they offloaded it earlier, but I'm not sure that a public entity should be in the Real Estate Speculation business. Plus, there is the missing tax $$ that could have been acquired over time had these been in private hands.All that aside... I think these are pretty good proposals, and I think DART should set a schedule for selling off more land that they don't use in addition to these.

I don't mind if they hold a bit of land for platform extensions or station expansions (bathrooms would be nice) but yeah, I think they should immediately jump at these and sell/lease this land off as per each individual proposal. All of these, including the one that is mostly a public garden, are better uses of this land.

You do know how laughable this is, right? Michael Carroll has taken over as head of the UNT "Economics Research Group" from Bernard Weinstein. They're notorious for reaching whatever conclusion is desired by whoever is paying for the study.

In this case DART takes responsibility for every construction project within a quarter-mile of a rail station, including those just planned or proposed. They then more than double that number to get a "total impact" number. "Total fiction" would be more accurate. By the way, over $5 billion of that $7 billion figure comes from the "planned or proposed" projects. The "direct impact" of projects actually under construction or completed is less than $1 billion. And of course they ignore the close to a billion dollars a year that DART taxes suck out of the local economy.

The truth is that there's an inverse relationship between the DART rail stations and new development. Look at downtown Dallas. With a few exceptions you see more new development the further away you get from DART stations. At the macro level, since DART's inception an incredible 93% of North Texas population growth has been outside the DART service area.

Hannibal Lecter wrote:You do know how laughable this is, right? Michael Carroll has taken over as head of the UNT "Economics Research Group" from Bernard Weinstein. They're notorious for reaching whatever conclusion is desired by whoever is paying for the study.

In this case DART takes responsibility for every construction project within a quarter-mile of a rail station, including those just planned or proposed. They then more than double that number to get a "total impact" number. "Total fiction" would be more accurate. By the way, over $5 billion of that $7 billion figure comes from the "planned or proposed" projects. The "direct impact" of projects actually under construction or completed is less than $1 billion. And of course they ignore the close to a billion dollars a year that DART taxes suck out of the local economy.

The truth is that there's an inverse relationship between the DART rail stations and new development. Look at downtown Dallas. With a few exceptions you see more new development the further away you get from DART stations. At the macro level, since DART's inception an incredible 93% of North Texas population growth has been outside the DART service area.

UNT should be embarrassed to have their name anywhere near that “study.”

An actual study would attempt to measure development around station areas vs development in similar areas without a station. There’s also the issue of—to the extent that there really is more development around stations— whether DART is actually “generating” development, as opposed to redistributing it from other locations. Geographic redistribution to near transit is great, but it’s different from generating additional development.

The Toyota Music Factory website gives one a pretty good idea of how much the Convention Center DART station had to do with the development of the music factory and how important they consider its "proximity".)